As it happens, Elon Musk is up to no good, as per usual. There is a laundry list of misdeeds and faux pas he has committed ever since he took over Twitter in October 2022, but this missive will only really concern the pendejadas he has gotten into this week because JFC, I don’t have all day.
More and more people are beginning to figure out that Elon Musk makes a lot of promises that he can’t or won’t deliver on, that he tells fibs like most people breathe, and that he’s really not the Tony Stark-like superhero space genius that he’s been trying to convince us that he is for about a decade or so. In fact, they are starting to suspect that he’s really not that smart at all.
The most recent kerfuffle has to do with the self-publishing platform Substack. The company found its tweets locked out of any engagement on Twitter, with no likes, replies, or retweets allowed on any of their tweets. The co-founders of Substack started tweeting about it, saying they hoped it was an “error and only temporary.” Spoiler alert, it wasn’t an error. The gallery below shows a tweet from the official Substack account with only one like, zero replies, and almost 2000 quote tweets. Elon couldn’t or didn’t remove the ability to quote tweets. The other tweets are from the co-founders of Substack, Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie, expressing their disappointment.
Substack users found that they couldn’t link their own Substack blogs to their tweets. Matt Taibbi was one of those people. He has a popular Substack blog and is one of Elon Musk’s pet journalists chosen to write The Twitter Files, an alleged expose of how Jack Dorsey’s Twitter was a hellhole of “wokeness” that stole the free speech of PROUD AMERICANS who were only trying to spread vaccine conspiracy theories (during a deadly pandemic), racist and antisemitic hate, anti-LGBTQ fearmongering, Covid denial and push the idea that the election was stolen from Donald Trump in collusion with the U.S Government.
What a bunch of fascists! Real Americans would just let people die because FREEDOM!
By the way, specifically regarding Covid, depending on who you believe, the death toll is either 6,893,190 million, WHO’s official number, or 18.2 million, calculated by The Lancet from each year’s excess mortality rate. That means that on top of the deaths we usually have each year, an additional 6.8 million to 18.2 million people have died since 2020 of a disease that Covid deniers think everyone should get as many times as possible. I mean, it will just strengthen your immune system, right? You will have the strongest immune system of anyone else at the ICU or the morgue! SCORE!
Taibbi, a formerly respected reporter who was eighty-sixed from mainstream journalism after he was accused of sexual harassment because of *checks notes* things that he freely bragged about in his own memoir. Got it. So Taibbi already has a history of shooting himself in the dick. Still, he’s found a way to continue to write and make a living as a crusading journalist standing up for what’s right by *checks notes again* working with a billionaire with no moral compass who wants to take over Mars.
Sounds legit.
Taibbi then asked his buddy ol’pal Elon what was up when the throttling of Substack links was discovered. Of course, you would think his bestie would give him some information, especially since he went to the mat defending Elon and doing The God Emperor of Twitter’s bidding.
Hello?
These are some screenshots from Taibbi’s Substack and chat, where he talked about asking Elon Musk himself and getting no response. Man, that’s cold.
The official story is that Musk is blocking Substack because they are about to open a feature called Notes, which allegedly has a similar interface to Twitter and could potentially be competition. Twitter isn’t doing so well with advertisers, and those Twitter Blue subscriptions aren’t exactly rolling in. Elon does not like competition.
Taibbi found this out because he finally got an answer from Twitter/Elon. When he was offered the option of leaving Substack and posting his articles on Twitter instead, he chose Substack.
Shots fired.
That’s right. Matt Taibbi dumped Elon Musk. That’s a cold shot right over Twitter’s bow. This is serious because, in one of the comments on his Substack post, he said that he would have put up with pretty much anything to keep working on that story. That’s a very interesting way to characterize working with Musk. Gee, why would anyone be unhappy working for Elon Musk?
But is that really the reason?
I have said it at least a dozen times if I have said it once. Elon Musk is a psychological twin of Donald Trump. He’s learned a lot from the Donald’s “success” and absolutely nothing from the pasting that Trump is currently subjected to. They both think they are geniuses with no proof; they have constructed myths about themselves that bear no resemblance to reality and created intense cults of personality around themselves. The delusion is real for them.
You gave me fortune; you gave me fame
You gave me power in your god's name
I'm every person you need to be
Oh, I'm the cult of personality
TL/DR: they are clowns who have convinced people that they matter and amassed fortunes for doing almost nothing noteworthy. Unless, of course, you count the many times they have donned their clown make-up and danced on the world stage.
But the critical thing about Donald and Elon that I want to point out here is that they are exceedingly petty and vengeful. They bond aggressively and quickly with certain people that they need to do their bidding. However, if you embarrass or fail them somehow, especially if you do something that makes you look weak or, worse, anything that makes them look bad, by extension, you get the heave-ho immediately.
Not only will they cut you off pronto, but they will also immediately start pretending that you don’t exist and/or begin publicly bad-mouthing you. Trump went after Omarosa Manigault-Newman after he had John Kelly fire her. He pretended he knew nothing about it when she asked him directly.
He tweeted, “Wacky Omarosa, who got fired three times on The Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it and never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes. I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious but not smart. I would rarely see her but hear really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work…”
Omarosa taped call with Trump after she was fired
CNN, Maegan Vazquez, August 13, 2018
Manigault-Newman wrote a book about her time in the White House called
”Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.” Trump’s campaign sued her. They lost to the tune of $1.3 million.
Sean Spicer was loyal and successfully walked a very slim tightrope, so he was spared public humiliation. Still, Trump could not stand the attention his press conferences garnered and didn’t like that he was played by a woman, Melissa McCarthy, on SNL. Spicer was humiliated privately. As an ex-Catholic, I can tell you that even though Spicer didn’t show it, this is one of the worst things you can do to a devout Catholic.
Traveling reporters knew that Spicer, a devout Catholic, had fallen from favor when he was excluded from the group of White House staffers given an audience with the Pope when the president was visiting Vatican City. Spicer's days seemed numbered. Trump was irked that the press briefings were getting such high ratings and even that Spicer was portrayed by a woman on SNL. The question in the White House became not whether Spicer would be replaced but when.
How Sean Spicer Went Horribly Wrong.
NBC News, By Ali Vitali July 22, 2017
Spicer was intentionally pushed out because Donald Trump appointed Anthony Scaramucci as Communications Director, a move that Spicer could not abide by. Anthony Scaramucci was fired 11 days after he took over, and the fireworks began.
Those are just a few examples of Trump’s tendency to humiliate and attack those who have worked for him. The severity of the attacks depends on how much he feels he has been slighted and how the person reacts.
But has Elon Musk humiliated people publicly? Well, yes, and within the last month. Elon got into a lot of trouble for mocking a disabled Twitter employee Haraldur Thorleifsson. Thorleifsson worked at Twitter because his company was acquired by Twitter prior to Musk taking over.
He found that he had been locked out of his account but was never notified about being terminated by the company, which is incredibly sloppy work by Twitter and Elon Musk. Thorleifsson tweeted Musk politely to get an answer and was subjected to crass insults. It looked particularly bad because Thorleifsson refused to respond in kind.
Elon is slightly different in that he occasionally apologizes if he has to, and this time, he had to apologize to Haraldur Thorleifsson. Elon tried to paint Halli as an “independently wealthy” guy, which is hilarious, seeing as where Elon comes from. Spoiler alert: Elon comes from wealthy parents.
So while I think that it is true that Elon is reacting to the news that Substack is launching a possible competitor to Twitter with Notes, I think the real issue is Matt Taibbi.
Why do you think that? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. In my opinion, here's the real reason. Matt Taibbi unwisely decided to do an interview with Mehdi Hasan on Hasan's MSNBC show and got clobbered. Hasan put Taibbi's Twitter Files posts and their errors under a journalistic microscope.
Hasan then lit a fire and roasted Taibbi alive, casting grave suspicion on the Twitter Files and their (already) questionable reputation. The funniest thing about this is that Matt Taibbi asked Hasan to have him on the show to discuss Twitter’s censorship of speech. He challenged Hasan, and Hasan easily lobbed him into the dumpster, so much for the idea of Taibbi being the heir to gonzo journalism. If you watch the Hasan videos, Taibbi is anything but the successor to Hunter S. Thompson.
https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/1644062485207568404
The very next day, Twitter went to war with Substack links. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
Today, Taibbi is flush. He is no longer affiliated with Rolling Stone, but his Substack newsletter, TK News, is one of the most popular on the site, boasting more than 30,000 paying subscribers. Which means, at $50 a pop, he easily can clear $1 million annually, making him a member of the one percent. In addition, he hosts a popular podcast, Useful Idiots, with the comedian and filmmaker Katie Halper, where the two debate hot-button media issues and interview unconventional leftists like Chris Hedges, Adolph Reed, and Dennis Kucinich.
What Happened to Matt Taibbi?
New York Magazine· by Ross Barkan· October 29, 2021
If I have to spell it out, by throttling Substack’s Twitter traffic, in Elon’s mind, that is two-for-one. He gets back at Taibbi and Substack at the same time. He also, in theory, has plausible deniability about going after Taibbi.
Just how petty is Elon Musk about this? Well, here’s how he responded to Taibbi and Substack via a tweet from Twitter user Bret Weinstein. Remember that Musk has only a casual relationship with truth as a concept.
Want to see more pettiness? If you clicked on a Substack link in a Tweet anytime before this morning, you got the standard malware warning. Warnings like this are usually enough to discourage people from continuing.
More? If you look up Matt Taibbi on the Twitter search bar, you don’t see Taibbi’s official account (@mtaibbi). What you do get, as the first result, on the People tab is Mehdi Hasan’s account. OUCH. The only other links to Taibbi are his Useful Idiots podcast Twitter profile, think about that for a moment, and an old account that retweeted his Rolling Stone articles. Maybe those are coincidences, maybe not. Who knows?
What happens if you search for Substack on Twitter? Since the turmoil began, any search on Twitter for Substack defaults to search results for the word newsletter. The people tab defaults to newsletter, too, so the list is a bunch of publications like Bloomberg, Vice, and The Intercept that all talk about their newsletter in their bios, not Substack.
Substack tweeted yesterday that they were glad that the “suppression” of Substack links was apparently over. However, they don’t seem to realize that their entire website is still being suppressed in Twitter searches and that Twitter is still not fully allowing embeds of tweets on Substack.
To find the Substack Twitter account, you must search Google and enter Twitter through the Google search link directly to their profile. The last screenshot is from my own Substack blog while trying to embed a Tweet. To be fair, I was able to embed some tweets in my newsletter, but the last time I tried, I got the error message, so there’s still some tomfoolery going on as of today.
I am writing this because I think that it is pretty easy to connect the dots once you’ve seen all the evidence or the bird dung that Elon Musk’s Twitter left all over Substack and Matt Taibbi. It is also interesting that not only did Elon Musk accuse Matt Taibbi of being a Substack employee, he suddenly started talking about friendship on his Twitter feed.
For the record, Chris Best, one of the co-founders of Substack, denied all of Musk’s allegations. I have no skin in this game, no paid subscribers on Substack, and I have rarely used it since signing up. I don’t trust the owners of this site yet, either.
Twitter responded to a request for comment with the standard poop emoji.
I did after I left that.
6’1”
He seems a much smaller person to me.
How’s it going Dolores?
I like a network now rather than the big room.
I can blow off steam on my blog.
Or post pics .
https://exetertowncrier.com/
F Twitter.
It’s over.